My father knew. And always got in trouble for it. No one wanted to hear what he had to say, except the people who made a lot of money on his words, lawyers and property owners.

But regular people did not.

Because my father always wanted to lift the end of the carpet, to uncover the truth.

As he told me more than once, “there are no miracles.”

Change is constant. Winners know this. And adjust on the fly.

Naked ambition is plentiful.

The smarts to pull it off?

Small time players want fame. They think if they get their name in the paper, they’ve won. I’ve never understood the people who allow their houses to be featured in the real estate section, even the multi-million dollar trophy homes in the “Wall Street Journal” “Mansion” section. And who can you trust? Your spouse? Your lover? Nobody?

You’ve got no real friends, it’s only business. And those who you’re not in business with, if they’ve got time for you at all, it’s only until it conflicts with their shot, because everybody’s hustling.

You need to be bigger than the game, live outside the law.

As do most of the winners in society. They don’t do what’s right, but what’s expedient. And the great unwashed buy the image, because they never get to meet the men and women they adore.

The winners write history. They see laws and morals as something to be bent.

I think it started with the PresidentS, who lied under oath. If the President doesn’t care about the truth, why should I?

But the 2008 economic crash put a stake in the middle class’s heart, well, what was left of it. Not only did the bankers rape and pillage, they got off scott-free. Financiers encouraged falsehoods in order to get rich, that’s what the mortgage crisis was all about, and the working man who was blamed ended up upside down in his house, if he still had one at all.

But what bothers me is the way lying has been legitimized. We throw our hands up at e-mail spam, it’s something we have to live with. We’re stunned when Target loses our credit cards. We never turn the spotlight upon ourselves, ask ourselves about our behavior, what we can do to make things better. And primarily we don’t do this because it doesn’t pay. In today’s society, if there’s no economic benefit, people are out.

The same way they refuse to sacrifice. That was another tenet of the Greatest Generation handed down to their children. You had to sacrifice for the greater good. But today no one can lose their job, no one can lose a step in order to help those at the rear. It’s like people want to live in a museum, populated by record stores and book stores. As if they hadn’t studied the Middle Ages and were unaware of the penalties of stagnation.

But the shenanigans of the rich and powerful have infected the rank and file. People feel fine having handicapped placards, even though they’re fully ambulatory. They feel no duty to fill out forms accurately. And then, without million dollar lawyers, they’re the ones who go to jail, because they don’t understand culpability and intent.

And public schools often suck, so you lie to get your kid into a better one, saying they live with a relative, or you work the angles to get into a private one.

And once you’ve got it rigged, you want to shut the door. Pull the plug on public schools you’ve left behind.

Legislators care about lobbyists, not constituents. Political campaigns are about disinformation, who can yell inaccuracies loudest.

It’s every man for himself in America today. Life is a pinball machine wherein you must be fully aware, recover from being banged around by the bumpers, and avoid falling into holes and tilting.

We’ve got no leaders, no one speaking to the regular people telling them to do the right thing.

So when these fat cats screw us do you really expect us to be honorable? Even though Samsung never knocks on your door, even though the corporation doesn’t want to sponsor you?

Nobody likes a wuss, nobody likes namby-pamby. If you’re not offending someone, you’re not doing it right. Likes are for Facebook, not art. Art has an edge. Art makes people uncomfortable. It makes people think. It makes people feel. If you rub off all the rough points no one will talk about you, no one will care about your art, and now, more than ever, the road to success is paved with discussion.